


Never Doubt I Love

by nmichaelis



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Insecurity, Jealousy, M/M, post Narada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:06:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6140985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nmichaelis/pseuds/nmichaelis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris feared Jim would leave him for someone younger what with him now almost crippled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Doubt I Love

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer  
> I do not own anything of Star Trek.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.”

― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

It had been a tiring day, night, whatever, he’d lost track of the time since he was left behind on the ball of ice that was Delta Vega. With Pike still out of commission and Spock relinquishing command, he had to take care of the ship – cracked hull, loss warp core, and all – and led the depressed crew through repairs as they limped home. Frankly, he wasn’t a ball of sunshine himself. How could he, after the massive loss of lives due to ‘a particularly troubled Romulan’, Chris taken hostage, Earth’s almost destruction, and everything else in-between. He’d been worried since Chris went into the Narada and there’d been no time to check up on his lover between the reports flowing in from every part of the ship.

The light in sickbay was dimmed and the room was silent saved for the occasional pained groans from the sleeping occupants. A nurse on duty looked from the PADD she had been perusing when he walked in and, after taking in the Acting Captain was in sickbay, moved to approach. He waved the well-intentioned woman away.

Chris’ biobed had been sectioned off from the main part of sickbay with a thick white curtain for privacy. He slipped in quietly and his eyes immediately went to the biobed monitor, reading the charts and numbers with practiced ease – when someone had gone in and out of hospital as often as him, a decent understanding of all those medical craps was a given.

“Hey.”

The soft greeting shifted his attention to the man on the bed looking at him with a strange mixture of relief and dread. He tilted his head in confusion. Why those emotions? Well, he got the relief. But dread?

He sat beside the bed and placed his hand lightly over his lover’s, twining their fingers together. “Hey to you, too. How’re you?”

 “You’ve read my medical record. What do you think?” Chris replied drily but there’s a tentative note in his voice that caused him concern.

“Chris, is there something wrong? You’re worried about something and it’s not your health, you need major surgery after we get back to Earth but Bones told me the chance of success is pretty high, so stop trying to distract me.”

“It’s just an old concern I have, I’ll take care of it, I promise. You don’t have to worry, Jim.”

“Alright, but you know you can tell me anything.”

Despite his words, he couldn’t help but worried because Chris wasn’t looking at him and that’s his tell when he was hiding something. There’s nothing he could do though, he wasn’t going to force his lover to tell him anything if he didn’t want to because he himself kept a lot of secrets that wouldn’t see the light of day if he had any say.

 

***

 

Chris looked around the vast ballroom where cadets, instructors, Starfleet officers, and their families were celebrating the graduation of what remained of the fourth year class. This was the first time an Academy graduation event included so many of non-Academy members. It was a flimsy cover for what would have been the empty spaces where those who died at Vulcan should be.

Involuntarily, his eyes strayed to his lover, his young, vibrant, handsome lover with such a promising future stretching in front of him, who could have anyone he wanted with just a smile and a wink of those bright blue eyes.

Jim was talking with a dark-haired man in a black suit by a large pillar near the floor-to-ceiling window. They had been talking for the last twenty minutes, politely deflecting anyone trying to intrude their little bubble, Chris had been watching. He didn’t know who the man was but it was clear he knew Jim, well enough for the new Captain to favor his company to that of Doctor McCoy.

And then Jim laughed at something his companion said, the bright, genuine thing, not the simple smirk or grin he usually displayed for the mass.

Chris stared, entranced, because this man, this stranger he didn’t even know exist until now, had pulled such reaction from Jim in twenty minutes where Chris himself could count the times he see it with fingers left over in the three years he knew Jim.

He looked away from the strangely intimate sight, heart stuttering in his chest.

The room suddenly felt suffocating.

“Andrew,” he called his assigned nurse, “Take me home.”

His nurse didn’t ask anything about his abrupt request, if he noticed the direction of his gaze for the length of the night he didn’t say anything, and Chris was thankful for the young man’s discretion.

That night, he lay awake in his comfortable king-sized bed and cried silently into his soft pillow until he drifted into tired, restless sleep an hour later. He didn’t wake up when his communicator beeped signaling an incoming message sometime after midnight, and he didn’t even stir when a body slipped into bed behind him an hour after the message came. He didn’t see the concerned frown marring his lover’s forehead when the blond noticed the tear tracks glistening under the moonlight slipping through the curtains, and the slightly damp pillow. He didn’t feel the feather-light kiss pressed onto his temple or the gentle brush of fingers over his cheek.

 

***

 

Jim woke up to sunlight hitting his face, soft breaths against his shoulder, and a solid weight turning his left arm numb. He must have moved or something because the warmth beside him stirred. He turned his head and smiled into the greying dark-brown hair.

“Good morning,” he greeted softly.

Chris froze at the greeting and Jim’s worry from last night, or early morning, whatever, returned in double, waking him up at once. Jim lifted himself with an elbow planted on the bed, hovering over his lover, sharp blue eyes drilling into the other man’s brown eyes.

“So, are you going to tell me what’ve been on your mind for the past, oh, I don’t know, six weeks?” Jim inquired lightly.

“Should we talk about this right now?” Chris didn’t even bother denying that something had been troubling him.

Why should he?

He wasn’t going to chain his brilliant lover to an old cripple like him. He definitely didn’t want Jim to come to resent him later down the road when he realized all the wasted time he could have with someone his age.

Jim stared down at Chris, stunned by the easy acquiescence. “Uh, yeah, if you’re amenable to talk to me. I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I just think you need to talk to someone about it.”

Chris struggled to sit up, at least it would lent him a little dignity when the unavoidable happened. He took a fortifying breath and finally said, “I’ve been thinking, maybe we should stop…this.” He gestured vaguely at them.

Jim took a sharp intake of breath at the sudden declaration. “What? Chris, what are you–?” His expression darkened for a few seconds before a wall seemed to slam closed, face smoothing out worthy of a Vulcan and when he asked ‘why?’ his voice was perfectly even.

Chris flinched at Jim’s reaction, hands trembling in the folds of his blanket. He’d never seen that expression on Jim’s face, not even when Jim was angry at the Ethics professor in his second term, it just didn’t fit the young man’s personality.

Of course, Chris didn’t know that Jim was hurt, not angry, and his defensive mechanism when hurt was to stuff down all emotions into the back of his mind until he had the time to deal with it. Anger he could let out, shown to all and sundry, because it wasn’t a weakness, not to him anyways. But hurt was an entirely different beast. It was a weakness, it couldn’t be turned into an advantage thus it couldn’t be shown to anyone else.

“Chris, why do you want to break up with me?” Jim repeated when the older man remained clamming up on his reasons.

“I want you to be happy,” Chris blurted out in the face of Jim’s Vulcan-impression. Those words opened a floodgate. Everything just tumbled out, his feelings and insecurities laid bare for the blonde’s scrutiny until he was left shaking with a rare bout of anxiety and exhaustion.

“You’re an idiot,” Jim huffed softly, fondly, gentle fingers tangling in the short salt-and-pepper hair, “Your injury doesn’t change anything between us. It definitely didn’t change anything I love about you.”

“What about your friend last night?”

Jim narrowed his eyes in thought. Friend? Last night? Chris couldn’t mean Bones.

Blue eyes brightened in insight and lips quirked in a grimace. “You mean Tom? Black hair, one dark brown eye, and black suit?”

“You talked with him for a long time. You only talked with him since he approached you an hour into the party,” Chris pressed the point.

“He’s my best friend, or brother, take your pick. And he’s happily married.”

“Not Doctor McCoy?”

Jim blinked in amused confusion. “What? No, Bones never even saw Tom, I can say with certainty they’re not friends, let alone best friends.”

“I mean, I thought McCoy is your best friend?” Chris rolled his eyes, relaxing slightly after Jim’s reassurance of their continued relationship.

“Ah,” Jim said sheepishly, “Bones is my best friend in the Fleet but Tom is my best friend. We are what you might call childhood friend.”

“He is from Iowa? You never talked about him or any friend outside Starfleet.”

“Do you want to meet him?” Tom had been nagging him to introduce his lover since last year when Jim admitted he was serious about the relationship.

“I would like that, Jim.”

Jim leant forward and kissed his lover chastely. “I will tell him to meet us in that French restaurant you like,” he promised.

Chris rested his head in the crook of the younger man’s neck and hid a delighted smile against the soft cotton shirt. This outcome was much better than he expected, and Jim started to open up to him about his past! It was selfish of him but he didn’t want to relinquish his lover if the other was happy with him. They would be fine together.


End file.
